“You see before you Sophroniska Vom Pouilly-Gepackt,” the Professor said proudly. “The Prinzessin calls her ‘Topsy.’” Topsy staggered with self-importance out to the oval lawn, and before she knew it Father had slipped the Dresden links upon her.
“An interesting specimen,” he murmured. “Full of nothingness, yet oblivious to it.” Then his eyes flared on the animal as if to calm her, as one sets a fire line to contain a larger one. “Put on this bow, my little bitch,” he said to her. And then, linked by the telephone cord, they walked about the grassy circle, entering for a moment the netherworld of direct apprehension.
“The fair sex, as with asteroids, are either coming toward you or going away from you. That is the first thing we must determine,” Felix intoned, “though with royalty,” he grinned, “we can measure where they have been, if not where they are going.”
“She appears supernormalian to me,” the Professor beamed, though Topsy had begun to stray impertinently as the Dresden circlets imperceptibly swallowed one another, an aimless sluttish gambol, the chief aim of which was apparently to advertise that her every sense was as good as dead, a fact to which Father at first gave a little slack of compassion. Topsy had brought all the self-indulgence of the future Age of Solipsism into Semper Vero with her scraggly arse.
“We have a saying in Cannonia, Professor. ‘From a dog, you will never get bacon.’” Then Felix walked on, relaxed and erect, whistling a little Turkish march, mimicking Topsy’s minimal alertness like a flaneur in a strange city for the first time who pretends he is lost to see what random reaction that might precipitate. This calculated air of absence caught her attention. He cut a scallop from the circle on the next pass, just a fraction, taking the rind off their route and making it ovoid, the telephone cord gradually straightening, until it was taut as the horizon. And then, with the greatest delicacy, he gave neither a pop, a snap, a tug, nor a yank, but something at once more forceful and precise — a pulse before the beat — which drew the collar ringlets taut just above the larynx. This caused Topsy to catch her teenage breath, and thus inverting her sense of smell, focused her brain upon her sphincter, and, like sensing a burnt cake taken out of the oven in the next town, take in the faintest whiff of the invariance of life.
Of course, she lunged. But the impersonal mechanism did its job, the simple line of force instructing Topsy that it was she who was injuring herself. Then Father spoke.
“Topsy,” he said, as if she were the most important person in the world, “so schtupid!” And their eyes, blue above and bronze below, met for a moment in a single violet transplant.
Another lunge. This time determined and powerful, as a man walks more deliberately when his hands are tied behind his back, but the line of legitimization, the opposite of breathing, again enforced itself.
“Soooooooooo schtoopid!” Topsy’s eyes bulged at the judgment, the first virginal sign of focusing, after surviving a few footfalls of fear. And then they walked on together in a little collective shudder, not interested in diminishing the circle any longer, but only in maintaining a proper distance, Topsy watching Father’s mouth out of the corner of her eye. Then it happened. She took a single cautious step, not without spring, and perhaps for the first time ever — like a man who has done his first backflip and then never forgets how — it was evident she was paying attention to where she was going, not just following her nose.
“So schmart,” Felix said softly. “Sie schmart, Topsy!”
They took a few more somewhat grandiose turns, feelings without names pulsating along the cord, then Father stopped short without taking up the slack, and Topsy copied him. He reached down, and patted her head.
“Schmart Topsy,” he said, and then removed the collar. “Nunc scio quid sit amor” (“Now we know what love is”), he muttered to himself.
The Professor stared incredulously. “So schtupid? So schmart? That’s the whole of it?”
“All for now,” Father said cheerfully. “Never work a tired dog.” Topsy rolled on her back in the grass, arching her spine, as if to rub away the stain of the experience. “Lest the neurotica become psychopathia.”
“And what do we call this. . methodology?” the Professor sniggered.
“Ah, Professor, try to be serious for a moment. The only true method is this: you try to hear all the notes before you hum the tune.”
The Princess had been watching this demonstration attentively through her lorgnette like a drowned man. “She’s just like me,” she murmured sadly. “A little barbarous, but only on the inside. It won’t come out.” Topsy had begun to walk backward like a snail trying to fit itself back into its lost shell.
“She seems to have no particular problem,” Mother said brightly, wiping something from her eye. “She is beautifully shaped, with perfect little feet, and her nostrils are expanded more than I ever saw in any dog, I think.”
The Princess smiled mysteriously. “Her only problem is. . abdominal.”
“If I may say,” Father interjected without a trace of irony. “The fair sex, though possessing unbounded and most proper influence over us, have but little control over their canine favorites. This is because when they take the poor soul for a walk, they constantly call to it, lest it should go astray. Ere long, the dog pays not the slightest attention. There is also a varying in the tone of voice which generally prevents teaching anything beyond the art of begging. ‘Beg, beg, beg, sir. Beg!’ Am I not correct? And sitting in a begging attitude is not an agreeable position for a dog. One might quite as easily teach her to dance, hold a pipe in her mouth, shut the door, pull a bellrope, leap over a parasol, or drag forth a napkin and spread it as a tablecloth. What would you have, Princess?”
The Princess had once made a show of good will and benevolence to those who, being different from herself, could not imagine her true interests and tastes. But she now made little effort to explain herself, knowing that in most cases this would be futile.
“Your husband, my dear,” she turned to Mother, “seems a man very much in contact with his uck.”
Ainoha reacted as if she had been struck by a bullet, and quickly braced herself by grasping the Princess’s forearm, which caused her in turn to blanche. The very mention of that word, and the merest chance that it would set off the causeries of abstract chat of the last visit, threw a fear into her she had not experienced since seeing a dog run over in the road, and watching it scream with pain as it dragged its broken hindquarters off into the woods. She resolved to lock the door forever on this lumber room of discourse.
“Do you enjoy diving, Prinzessin?” she blurted out.
“I beg your pardon!”
“Diving. You know, into water.” Her voice trilled back in her throat.
“Well, not since I was a child,” the Princess murmured. Her sadness had, if anything, deepened.
“Then it’s settled. We must recast the days of your youth here. I’ll take care of everything. Then we’ll go shoot some arrows.” And as she rushed her guest into the house, the men doffed their hats, and even Topsy herself seemed somewhat relieved.
“Another didact, I see,” Father said under his breath.
“Her virility and station have caused her a great deal of suffering,” the Professor said evenly. “She deserves your every consolation.”
“There are, no doubt, griefs and distresses no physician can measure. As for little Topsy, who can say? She is either a little too absent or a little too present, and always a little off center. Beauty with nothing else is worse than shit. You can mix all the raisins you want with turds, but they’re still turds. But who knows, we may see a bit of progress yet.”